Wayne's World: Make the most of science behind meteorites

Okay, what were the odds of the 10,000 pound meteorite unexpectedly plowing into the Russian City of Chelyabinsk at 43,000 mph on Feb. 15, smashing glass, injuring 1,500 people and damaging buildings?

And on the same day, a rocky asteroid big as an Olympic-sized swimming pool made a record-close approach to Earth – just 17,200 miles away from us.Make both showing up on the same day a one-in-a-100-million chance, calculates the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Gee, at least that rocky asteroid left us alone – it was big enough to take out London.

So what's going on out there in what used to be in the simple 1950s man-conquers-space realm of tiny screen TV's Captain Video and his Video Rangers (no props)? Turns out this kind of scary collision stuff goes on all the time.

The best advice, says SUNY Orange astronomy instructor John Wolbeck, is make the most of its beauty, fascinating science and avoid at all costs the crippling “catastrophobia.”

Well, OK. But stuff does crash. Such as the now-famous Chevy Malibu struck by a 27-pound asteroid remnant of nickel, iron and stone that smashed through the car's trunk in Peekskill in 1992 at an estimated 160 mph. The fireball had been tracked across several states by high school football fans using camcorders.

The really breathtaking smasher was the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It plunged into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, leaving a 300-mile-wide crater whose outline was tracked from space.

“We're lucky to be here,” says Wolbeck, who is doing his doctoral thesis on the formation of one of our best friends – the moon that's shielded us from many asteroid and meteorite blows that could have been fatal.

“The moon's pocked with big craters from hits,” says Wolbeck.

He takes the really long view of maybe another big wipeout collision happening in a million years.

“It is going to happen,” he says, “and who knows what will be left?”

Every day, adds Storm King School astronomy teacher Warren Mumford, “the Earth gets hit by tiny meteors all the time.”

Make that 100 tons of space debris a year, adds the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

In fact, NASA says there are at least 5,000 known Near-Earth Objects out there bigger than 100 feet that can crash into Earth – some day.

It all began maybe 4.5 billion years ago when swirling dust clouds led to Earth's start-up.

As reminders of this rugged beginning, Wolbeck carries some of the small stones seared black from intense heat, that were part of Earth's formative debris. They actually floated around before the Earth formed.

“They are amazing; you hold them in your hand and think what they went through!” says Wolbeck.Just under 4.5 billion years old, these rocks, he says, are actually a touch older than our planet, which is kind of neat.